Devious - Lisa Jackson [178]
“Why?” Slade asked, but she was already pushing back her chair. When he caught the determination in her gaze, he followed suit. They weren’t alone. Other patrons were leaving the hotel, hoping to dash the few blocks to the orphanage and start bidding on the items on display in the old gymnasium.
“I want to poke around in the records of the orphanage,” she said under her breath, “before the whole place is torn down.” She didn’t have time to explain her urgency; it was just a feeling she had, stronger since seeing the picture of Sister Ignatia with the child. Soon the orphanage would be torn down or sold, the old records, those not on computer, lost or buried, the secrets they held gone forever.
“You can’t just go digging through the old records.”
“Not even if they’re about me?” she whispered as they crossed the main foyer, past the stools where the string quartet had played earlier, and through the glass doors into the night.
Rain was coming down steadily now, the wind whipping up. Slade battled the umbrella, then walked toward the church and orphanage. She sidestepped puddles as water rushed in the gutters, gurgling down the street, and though the air was warm, the drops falling from the sky felt cool and heavy.
As they made their way, she told Slade about what she’d seen in the program, how she’d tied it to Camille’s notes. He listened, holding the umbrella, but shook his head.
“You don’t think it’s anything?” she asked.
“Anything significant? I don’t see it.”
“You think I’m grasping at straws?”
“You tell me.”
She didn’t have time to argue with him, as they’d reached St. Elsinore’s.
Lights blazed around the cathedral, washing the old bricks with an eerie illumination that seemed to magnify the decay, showing off the crumbling bricks and cracks in the whitewash. While Spanish moss danced and swayed in the gusting wind, gargoyles stood guard of the cathedral. Perched on the gables and downspouts, the tiny demons appeared to ogle the flow of humanity streaming into the heavy doors of St. Elsinore’s.
It was silly to think that anything evil lurked here, Val knew, especially with all the patrons filling the building. Wasn’t there safety in numbers?
You’re nexxxxt, the gargoyle situated on the corner of the nave seemed to hiss from his roost. There is no esssscape.
“Bull,” she said under her breath, refusing to freak herself out.
“What?” Slade leaned forward, obviously trying to hear her over the rush of the wind.
“Nothing,” she said as they walked through the hallways lined with tables covered with items that were available for bidding, the silent part of the auction that would last until the verbal auction ended. The bigger items like the trips, a vintage carousel horse, and the Wembleys’ piano would be offered once the silent auction was declared over, in this case in two hours.
People were already bidding on items, signing their names to bidding sheets, adding amounts to the dollar column. Around each table, someone from St. Elsinore’s or St. Marguerite’s was stationed.
Sister Simone and Sister Georgia, the reverend mother for St. Elsinore’s, were already in the building, but Val also glimpsed several of the nuns who were in the St. Marguerite’s choir. Sister Maura, Sister Devota, and Sister Zita were walking around the hallways and gymnasium, though she didn’t see Sister Edwina. She told herself not to worry, that Edwina had been in the choir less than an hour earlier and that her theory that CALLED, the message left in Camille’s notes, wasn’t anything. Even if the notation indicated that the sopranos were half in love with Father Frank, it all had been just in Camille’s mind.
Right?
At that moment, she saw Sister Edwina appear, walking swiftly out of the restroom.
Nothing to worry about other than her own case of nerves.
And what she had planned.
More and more people arrived, and the throng became louder, the halls more packed, the fever of bidding running hot through the crowd. Val felt her nerves tightening. Just being here brought back unwanted memories, and every time she caught a glimpse of Father